which held letters of recommendation from the Duke of Würtemberg at Nuremberg in February 1604;[1] and with a company which took a repertory closely resembling the Nördlingen one to Rothenburg is 1604 and 1606.[2] This is all very ingenious guesswork.[3]
All trace of John Green is lost for several years after 1608. An isolated notice at Utrecht in November 1613 suggests that he may have spent part of this interval in the Netherlands.[4] A year or two later he returned to Germany. He was at Danzig in July 1615 and again, with Robert Reinolds, late of Queen Anne's men, in July 1616, having paid an intermediate visit to Copenhagen.[5] In 1617 he was at Prague for the coronation of the Archduke Ferdinand as King of Bohemia, and in July of the same year at Vienna.[6] The comparative infrequency with which English actors visited Austrian territory perhaps justifies the assumption that his is the company mentioned in a letter of recommendation sent by Ferdinand's brother, the Archduke Charles, at Neiss to the Bishop of Olmütz on 18 March 1617, as having played at Gräz before his mother the Archduchess Maria, who died in 1608, and having recently spent some months at the Court of Poland in Warsaw.[7] In 1618 Green's old leader, the indefatigable veteran Robert Browne, came out with a new company on his fifth and last visit to the Continent. He is first noted at Nuremberg on 28 May.[8] My impression is that the two men joined forces. Green's name does not appear in the records for a couple of years. But Reinolds, who had been with him at Danzig in 1616, was with Browne at Strassburg
- [Footnote: Susanna (? by Henry Julius of Brunswick or another version), The Prodigal
Son, A Disobedient Merchant's Son (? The London Prodigal), Charles Duke of Burgundy, Annabella a Duke's Daughter of Ferrara (? Marston's Parasitaster), Botzarius an Ancient Roman, and Vincentius Ladislaus (? by Henry Julius of Brunswick). Three of these plays (Romeo and Juliet, The Prodigal Son, and Annabella) are in the repertories of John Green; cf. p. 285.]
- ↑ Archiv, xiv. 122.
- ↑ Zeitschrift für vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte, N. F. vii. 61. They played in 1604 Daniel in the Lions' Den, Melone of Dalmatia, Lewis King of Spain, Celinde and Sedea, Pyramus and Thisbe, Annabella a Duke's Daughter of Montferrat; and in 1606 Charles Duke of Burgundy, Susanna, The Prodigal Son, A Disobedient Merchant's Son, An Ancient Roman, Vincentius Ladislaus. The Nördlingen and Rothenburg companies must be the same. Celinde and Sedea, however, is found in a repertory, not of Green, but of Spencer; cf. p. 289.
- ↑ Herz, 42, 65.
- ↑ A. van Sorgen, De Tooneelspeelkunst in Utrecht.
- ↑ Bolte, 41, 47. Herz, 27, conjectures that these may have been the English players at Wolfenbüttel in May 1615; cf. p. 277.
- ↑ Schlager, 168; Meissner in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xix. 139.
- ↑ Cohn, xciii; cf. p. 282 as to the inference that Green was at Gräz in 1607-8.
- ↑ Archiv, xiv. 129.
